


Grief Talking

by MoominQuartz (IceCreAMS)



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [7]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Betrayal, Episode: s03e24 Bismuth, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Implied Relationships, Lies, Mother-Son Relationship, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:29:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23248528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceCreAMS/pseuds/MoominQuartz
Summary: The very first true, poignant grief Pearl feels is the loss of Bismuth.
Relationships: Bismuth/Pearl (Steven Universe), Pearl & Steven Universe, Pearl/Rose Quartz | Pink Diamond
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1648339
Comments: 12
Kudos: 64
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	Grief Talking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silver_fish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_fish/gifts).



> Written for the prompt of Pearl + "Grief/Mourning." Thanks, Taylor, it was super fun writing this and making it not about Rose, which was not my intention when I started it but it sure is what happened!

Pearl has never known grief.

In thousands of years of loyal service to Pink Diamond, Pearl does not “get to know” many gems. She “knows of” plenty; the Nephrites who command her ships, the Rubies who act as guards, the Lapis Lazulis who begin the great journey of terraforming Earth. The Pearls who serve the most elite gems. But Pearl does not feel any great connection to any of it. She follows her programming, line by line, as she struggles to please a Diamond that tolerates her at best.

Then comes the Gem War.

Pearl does not grieve her life on Homeworld. It was a different time, and while she enjoyed it, it was an empty life; she enjoyed it not because she wanted to, but because she was supposed to. And isn’t it grand, that she can enjoy her life by her Diamond’s side in a new form, in a new way, with a new purpose? That her Diamond looks at her now without contempt, but with genuine joy and love? That Pearl can find a new purpose in her new friends, in the Crystal Gems, as she and her Diamond finesse the line between Ruthless Dictator and Rebel Leader?

— Then.

Gems shatter. It happens, especially in war. When Pearl watches Homeworld ship out yet another squadron of quartzes, Pearl feels no remorse even as she knows the Crystal Gems will vanquish them. Some of them may be chipped or fractured by accident, as this is no game they’re playing, but her Diamond has gone out of her way to see to it that no Homeworld gems are shattered with malicious intent. 

Homeworld does not have the same handicap.

Even as she watches her comrades be shattered in familiar hands, the very first true, poignant grief Pearl feels is the loss of Bismuth.

The worst part of all of it is that Pearl at least  _ knows  _ what happens to all of the soldiers she’s lost before. But shortly after the Battle for the Ziggurat, Bismuth vanishes. Or maybe it’s during the fight? The battlefields are always so chaotic, the fights always going longer than they plan for, but Pearl had sworn she’d seen a head of rainbow dreadlocks in the sea of survivors.

But maybe she hadn’t. Maybe it had been a different gem. Bismuth is gone, and her Diamond tells her this in the form of a Rose Quartz with tears in her eyes and trembling hands, and Pearl can’t comprehend it.

Bismuth, captured? It’s unthinkable.

Pearl goes back to that battlefield many, many times. Over hundreds of years, she searches on hands and knees, the grains of sand slipping through her hand like time in an hourglass, hoping desperately that somehow she’d been missed. Somehow Bismuth’s form had dissipated, and she’d been left behind, and perhaps something was keeping her from reforming — though Pearl doesn’t know what. It doesn’t matter what; it’s just her grief talking.

Rose Quartz joins her, sometimes.

Bismuth leaves a hole in Pearl that she can’t seem to fill. She sobs so hard, her form dissipates, and she reforms a harder, more resilient gem.

Then comes what the four of them call “the Great Corruption,” and then it isn’t just Bismuth. Everyone is gone in one instant, and all of their thousands of years of fighting is over. The Diamonds abandon the Earth, abandon the battle on its surface. 

Pearl loses almost everything in the same breath of victory, and isn’t it awful? Even in war, gems think they’re invincible until it’s proven that they aren’t.

The Crystal Gems mourn their fallen friends. Slowly, they pick themselves back up; slowly, they decide to bubble all of them, to care for them and to search for a cure. A new banner to rally under, a new cause to pursue, a new mission. If Rose could heal a gem’s physical wounds, then perhaps, with time, she could heal…  _ this. _

Pearl still wonders if it’s their grief talking.

* * *

Steven warps into the temple on their central warp pad. Pearl turns, expecting to see Bismuth with him. And she does; in his hands, he holds her bubble. He’s been burned, his shirt torn, hair askew and clothes smelling of the Forge.

“I have something to tell you all,” he says with a trembling voice.

Pearl stares at her surrogate son with eyes wide as he recounts everything. He and Bismuth had a fight, he says; she thought he was Rose Quartz, because he refused to use a gem-shattering weapon that she’d proposed, and if he was Rose Quartz, that meant he’d bubbled her.

His eyes stay on the bubble in his hands as he speaks, which is good. Pearl refuses to break apart in front of him, but it’s so incredibly difficult to keep her form together.

It’s not even the idea that Bismuth would attack Steven that has her so distraught. And oh, isn’t that just horrible? Steven’s been through so much, been under attack so many times, and it isn’t right, but it’s not surprising. But when Steven tells her that it was Rose Quartz who dissipated Bismuth’s form and bubbled her away, something clicks into place in a way it shouldn’t.

Rose’s tears back then may have been genuine, but her words weren’t.

“Oh, Pearl,” Rose had said around sobs, “she isn’t  _ anywhere.  _ You don’t think — could we have lost her? Could they have shattered her…?”

But Rose had never lost her at all. And even knowing that, Rose had ‘helped’ Pearl search. This is a revelation that terrifies Pearl. 

What else did Rose keep from her? What other moments that had felt like genuine sorrow, genuine joy, genuine moments kept between all the hell and chaos that surrounded them, had been lies?

Pearl looks at Steven and she wonders.

But that is just her grief talking.


End file.
